The triumphal takeover followed a day of intense bombing of houses and apartment buildings, destroying so many that it was impossible to determine the death toll. The neighborhoods of Bustan al-Qasr, al-Kallasa, al-Farod and al-Salhin in the Old City, as well as Sheikh Saed, in the southern district, are all now under regime control.

The U.N. had received credible reports of scores of civilians being killed either by intense bombardment or summary executions by pro-government forces. Zeid Raad al Hussein, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

Dozens of bodies reportedly litter the streets of a number of east Aleppo neighborhoods, with residents unable to retrieve them due to the intense bombardment and fear of being shot, Hussein said. He added that the U.N. had reports that at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children in four neighborhoods Bustan al-Qasr, al-Ferdous and al-Kallaseh and al-Saleheen.

Decrying the crushing of Aleppo, the immeasurably terrifying toll on its people, the bloodshed, the wanton slaughter of men, women and children, the destruction, the Jordanian-born U.N. official warned, We are nowhere near the end of this cruel conflict.

What can happen next, if the international community continues to collectively wring its hands can be much more dangerous." Hussein said the slaughter in Aleppo could repeat itself in Douma, Raqqa and Idlib, referring to other opposition-held areas in the war-ravaged country.

We cannot let this continue.

The White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group, described Aleppo as being like hell. The streets and destroyed buildings are full of dead bodies, said a tweet by one of its volunteers. The rescue service was reported to be totally paralyzed by the assault.

The head of the groups Aleppo branch, Ammar al-Salmo, said on Al Jazeera television that many old men died of the cold weather in eastern Aleppo.

More than 100 unaccompanied children were reported to be trapped in a building under heavy bombardment in eastern Aleppo, according to UNICEF, the U.N. agency responsible for child welfare said, quoting an unnamed doctor in the city, Reuters reported.

The head of the Aleppo local coordinating committee told regime forces had captured the remaining food supplies in eastern Aleppo and there are no functioning bakeries and no bread, the Turkish Anadolu news agency reported.

Syrian army spokesman Brig. Gen. Samir Suleiman countered that the U.N. was lying.

"These are false claims. The Arab Syrian army can never do this and we have never done it in our army’s history." Yesterday, the official Syrian news agency SANA instead lay blame for atrocities in Aleppo on the rebels, alleging that eight people were killed and 47 were injured in regime-held areas after the opposition bombed them. Most of the victims were women and children, according to the agency.

Abdullah Othman, the head of the Consultative Council in the Levant Front, one of the largest rebel groups in Aleppo, said this morning that the opposition was still in possession of six neighborhoods, including Salaheddine, once the sight of some of the fiercest urban combat the Syrian civil war had witnessed.

"Last night we were able to reinforce our new defense lines and to build some blast walls on the new borders," Othman told The Daily Beast today, speaking from the border town of Azaz. "Today the regime forces tried to sweep through our new defense lines but they havent been able to do so yet. But the problem is the barbaric, unprecedented bombardment and shelling that you cant even imagine."

Civilians were apparently crammed into whatever buildings still remain in the tiny quarters yet to be recaptured by the Assadists, but many were left outside in the streets, owing to lack of space. It is here, in broad daylight, Othman said, that men, women and children were being cooked alive by barrel bombs dropped right where they stood.

And those who survive the air raids could not be helped. "Women and children their screams can be heard underneath the rubble. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to get them out. Everyone is panicking. There is great fear. Everyone can only think of himself, not about others."

Yesterday, some residents who couldnt take the bombardment anymore fled toward regime controlled areas, according to Othman.

"Seventy-nine of them were executed at the barricades. The rest everyone under 40 were taken to warehouses that look more like internment camps. They face an unknown fate," he said.

"This morning 20 women committed suicide in order not to be raped."

The last hope of the besieged rebels, most of whom seem to have withdrawn in the face of certain defeat, had been to receive reinforcements or resupplies from their counterparts in the southern and western suburbs. That option has now been foreclosed upon as these routes are completely interdicted by the regime.

Enab Baladi, a Syrian opposition news channel, said regime artillery attacked the six neighborhoods remaining in rebel hands with 40 shells and its ground forces mostly Shiite militias under Iranian command are attacking from four directions.

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AA: No. Except over the body of every civilian. I wont surrender my body, and my wife, and my daughter to the Assad regime without defending them I hope that youll tell everyone what Im saying.

On a publicly visible WhatsApp feed belonging to the Aleppo Siege Media Center, al-Hamdo was more fatalistic. Doomsday is held in Aleppo, he said. People are running dont know where. People are under the rubble alive and no one can save them. Some people are injured in the streets and no one can go to help them [because] the bombs are [falling on] the same place.

Award-winning blogger and activist Marcell Shehwaro, a native of Aleppo, shared on Facebook a message from one of her most peaceful and least-sectarian friends. No Marcell, dont worry, it read. I will kill myself, I wont let them arrest me.

Lina al-Shamy, a 26-year-old woman speaking in fluent English, posted a video of herself to Twitter.

To everyone who can hear me. We are here exposed to a genocide in the besieged city of Aleppo. This may be my last video. More than 50,000 civilians who rebelled against the dictator, al-Assad, are threatened with field executions or dying under bombing. According to activists, more than 180 people have been field executed in the areas the regime has recently retook control of by Assads gangs and the militias that support them. The civilians are stuck in a very small area that doesnt exceed two square kilometers. With no safe zones, no life, every bomb is a new massacre. Save Aleppo, save humanity.

Jouad al-Khateb had a similar messageone hesitates to call it valedictory for the world. In Arabic, he told the camera: Behind me is the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood. Since last night up to the present moment, it is being bombed with every kind of weapon; vacuum rockets, missiles. The rockets have not stopped since last night. The people coming out of Bustan al-Qasr are telling me its become a city of ghosts. More than 20 families remain under the rubble across various districts. The White Helmets were unable to reach any of the victims, al-Khateb added.

My message to those watching: Just stop the waterfall of blood for us. We dont want to leave the besieged areas. Just stop the waterfall of blood. Its as if this has become very normal for the international community, you know, a rocket falls, 20 or 30 people are killed, under the rubble, they cant pull them outthats a totally normal thing. In any case, theres no space for graves to bury them in. Let them be buried under the buildings. I think this will be my last video, because weve gotten bored of talking, bored of speeches.

Al-Khateb was interrupted by a loud groaning sound.

Thats a barrel bomb, he said, referring to one of the regimes most notorious improvised munitions, a metal canister filled with high explosives and shrapnel, which are dropped indiscriminately from helicopters.

Another trapped resident, Ameen al-Halabi, boasted on Facebook, Im waiting for death or imprisonment by the Assad forces. I would rather die on the soil of my land than be arrested by their faithless militias. Al-Halabi asked his friends to forgive him if this was the last message he wrote.

On several rebel chat forums on the popular messaging application Telegram, there were calls for the youth of Syria to wage jihad against the conquerors of Aleppo, if only to defend the honor of women who had allegedly been raped in the course of the Assadist blitzkrieg.

Whether or not that particular war crime has yet occurred in Aleppothough human-rights monitors have documented mass rape in Syrian regime prisons since the start of the conflictthe call for holy war against the regime may yet take hold. For this reason, the CIA and Joints Chiefs of Staff earlier advised the Obama administration that the fall of eastern Aleppo, apart from being a humanitarian catastrophe, would also constitute a counterterrorism threat to the United States. The radicalization of survivors is all but a foregone conclusion.

Despite the gravity of the days events, and the many breaches of international law that led to the collapse of the rebel-held area, U.S. political leaders were slow to comment. President Obama has watched in silence as Russia and the Assad regime have committed what Secretary of State John Kerry called crimes against humanity, and Donald Trump has not once publicly mentioned the word Aleppo on his favorite social-media platform, Twitter, since being elected president of the United States a month ago. Kerry even meekly invited the Kremlin over the weekend to show a little grace in how it recaptured eastern Aleppo.

Meanwhile, the leading Syrian political opposition group charged Russia and the Syrian air force with the deaths of at least 150 civilians in what it described as a sarin gas attack on several villages in rural eastern Hama province Monday, and a further 15 in a missile filled with the nerve agent on the city of Raqqa on Monday.

Demanding an international investigation, the Syrian Coalition denounced what it called the shameful international inaction, which has paved the way for the level of blatant criminality by the Assad regime and its allies.

The gas attack, if confirmed, may have been intended to stop ISIS from linking up their forces in the Homs desert to those in the Hama desert area.

***

The Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is asit is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Quran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.

In a letter addressed to U.S. Congress, a copy of which was obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast, the Levant Front’s al-Othman beseeches legislators to "make one last effort to protect the civilians of Aleppo — to achieve where we have failed — by calling upon…Obama, to take strong and immediate measures for the people of Aleppo before the Assad murderers overtake us."

But it’s likely too late. And so the president who came to office promising to repair the breach between the United States and the Islamic world, putatively caused by the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, is now set to leave office having done little to stop to the slaughter or displacement of millions in Syria or the wholesale destruction of one of Islams most venerated cities.

]]>Former Obama, Clinton volunteer fired over sickening tweet about Carryn Owenshttp://progressnothingless.com/former-obama-clinton-volunteer-fired-over-sickening-tweet-about-carryn-owens/
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 14:44:01 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=4884Though Donald Trump’s tribute to fallen Navy SEAL Ryan Owens and his widow Carryn earned praise and respect from even some of his most vocal detractors, some critics still couldn’t resist the urge to bash him for it. As obnoxious as it is to be outraged at Trump over this, though, it’s on another plane …

]]>Though Donald Trump’s tribute to fallen Navy SEAL Ryan Owens and his widow Carryn earned praise and respect from even some of his most vocal detractors, some critics still couldn’t resist the urge to bash him for it. As obnoxious as it is to be outraged at Trump over this, though, it’s on another plane entirely to go after Carryn Owens. But that’s exactly what former Obama and Hillary volunteer Dan Grilo did last night (screenshot via Fox News): Needless to say, Grilo didn’t make a lot of friends over that tweet.As Fox News reported, Grilo first protected his tweets and then deleted his Twitter account entirely. But the damage was already done.

]]>‘Beyonc Professor’ Kevin Allred, who wished someone would shoot Trump, rants about being FIREDhttp://progressnothingless.com/beyonc-professor-kevin-allred-who-wished-someone-would-shoot-trump-rants-about-being-fired/
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 12:54:02 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=4823UPDATE: Allred has either deleted all of the tweets in this article or protected his account. Either way you can still read the content … Why would he go and do a thing like that? END UPDATE Remember Kevin Allred? Ok, so you may not … he is rather forgettable. That being said, a few …

]]>UPDATE:Allred has either deleted all of the tweets in this article or protected his account. Either way you can still read the content … Why would he go and do a thing like that?END UPDATE Remember Kevin Allred? Ok, so you may not … he is rather forgettable. That being said, a few weeks ago he tweeted this: Allred did delete the tweet, but not before many outlets (including Twitchy) were able to grab it and report it. Hey, if you’re unhappy with the president by all means, complain. But don’t say stupid shiznit about wanting him shot.

On that note, it would appear Montclair State fired Allred before he even really began teaching there … and he ranted about it on Twitter:

Trump has threatened: -the people of NYC (anyone on 5th ave)-Hillary Clinton-anyone approached by policewhen will FBI investigate this?

]]>‘What a photo’: An NBC News shot of Team Trump in Ohio is BEGGING for a captionhttp://progressnothingless.com/what-a-photo-an-nbc-news-shot-of-team-trump-in-ohio-is-begging-for-a-caption/
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 16:49:44 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=4191NBC posted a story about what led to the ouster of Reince Priebus on Sunday afternoon, but it wasn’t the report that caught the eyes of many. It was the photo. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says failed health vote was the last straw for Reince Priebus https://t.co/FKR1mluUiz pic.twitter.com/RMgw0qdKdr — NBC News (@NBCNews) July …

Pictured are Trump administration staffers and former campaign personnel. Leading the way and pointing is former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Communications assistant Omarosa Manigault is directly behind him, followed by the administration’s communications director, Anthony Scaramucci (in the sunglasses and on the phone) and adviser Sebastian Gorka (on the far left). The photo was taken by NBC during Trump’s visit to Ohio on Tuesday.

]]>$35,000 a plate: Donald Trump starts fundraising for 2020 re-electionhttp://progressnothingless.com/35000-a-plate-donald-trump-starts-fundraising-for-2020-re-election/
Thu, 29 Jun 2017 09:11:11 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3220Reporters barred from hearing presidents remarks at fundraiser held in Trumps Washington hotel President Donald Trump was whisked a few blocks from the White House to his hotel on Wednesday night for his first re-election fundraiser. But reporters were barred from hearing his remarks. Security was tight at the Trump International Hotel, where guests in …

]]>Reporters barred from hearing presidents remarks at fundraiser held in Trumps Washington hotel

President Donald Trump was whisked a few blocks from the White House to his hotel on Wednesday night for his first re-election fundraiser. But reporters were barred from hearing his remarks.

Security was tight at the Trump International Hotel, where guests in long gowns and sharp suits started arriving around five.

The presidents motorcade was greeted by protesters outside hoisting signs with slogans such as Health care not tax cuts and chanting Shame! Shame!

First-time candidate Donald Trump got a late start on fundraising in 2016, holding his first big-ticket donor event only five months before Election Day.

Forty months before his next election, the president holds court at a $35,000 a plate donor event Wednesday night at his hotel in Washington. About 300 people are expected to attend an event that will pull in about $10 million, said Lindsay Jancek, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Breaking the tradition of his predecessor, Trump is not allowing reporters to hear his remarks to the group of donors despite an announcement earlier in the day that a pool of reporters would be allowed in to hear the presidents remarks.

Its a political event and theyve chosen to keep that separate, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said when asked why the event is closed to the media.

After reporters complained, Sanders announced the presidents remarks would be opened to the press only to reverse herself hours later.

Unfortunately there was some confusion with the RNC, and due to the logistical challenges bringing in the press at this late moment is not going to be possible, she said in an email.

Sanders also said there was nothing unusual about raising political cash so early.Hes raising money for the party, she said. I dont think thats abnormal for any president.

Sanders statement that Trump is raising cash for the GOP tells only part of the story, though.

The first cut of the money raised goes to Trumps 2020 re-election campaign. The rest gets spread among the RNC and other various Republican entities. Having multiple beneficiaries is what allows Trump to ask for well above the usual $5,400 per-donor maximum for each election cycle.

Those contribution limits are likely to change because this fundraiser is so early that new donation limits for 2020 have not been set by the Federal Election Commission.

Trumps historically early campaigning comes with benefits and challenges.In the first three months of this year, the Trump campaign raised more than $7 million, through small donations and the sale of Trump-themed merchandise such as the ubiquitous, Make America Great Again ball caps.

The RNC also is benefiting from the new presidents active campaigning, having raised about $62 million through the end of last month. The party has raised more online this year than it did in all of 2016.

Trumps re-election money helps pay for his political rallies. He has held five so far, and campaign director Michael Glassner says those events help keep him connected to his base of voters.

The constant politicking, however, means it is challenging for government employees to avoid inappropriately crossing ethical lines. Some watchdog groups have flagged White House employee tweets that veer into campaign territory. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters says the employees work closely with lawyers to avoid pitfalls.

Activists from disability rights organization Adapt gathered outside McConnells office to demonstrate against the bill, which would dramatically cut Medicaid and strip funding from Planned Parenthood, to name just two measures.

Our Revolution set up a page on its website urging people to take action to stop AHCA [the Senate bill is called the Better Care Reconciliation Act but many of the principles are the same as the AHCA House bill] and prevent millions from losing their healthcare.

The organization has provided a number which will connect people to their Senators office, and has also provided some talking points.

AHCA would leave 23 million Americans without healthcare.

The bill would allow insurance companies to discriminate against patients and deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

A majority of voters strongly oppose repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare).

Americans want to expand healthcare, not gut it. In fact, two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for all.

Indivisible has its own page too, where people can submit amendments to their senator. This is about applying your constituent power directly to the process, Indivisibles website says. They also have an extensive list of reading material and a script people can use when talking to their representatives.

Ossoff: doomed from the start?

Thats what a number of progressives told the Guardian, after the 30-year-old lost to Republican Karen Handel in Tuesdays special election.

Jon Ossoff ran on a centrist, Clinton-esque platform that focussed on rather beige, uncontroversial issues like government waste. There was no talk of universal healthcare and little of welfare issues. He ran in what has traditionally been a Republican stronghold, and lost by only five points, but Ossoff was basically the opposite of the kind of populist candidate the left believes is the way forward.

Hes not in favour of single-payer healthcare, hes not outspoken on campaign finance reform, said Moumita Ahmed, founder of Millennials for Revolution. Why would I as a Republican vote for someone who isnt a Republican, but still has the same values as a Republican?

Winnie Wong, from People for Bernie, said Ossoffs run the election was the most expensive House race in history, by the way was a massive failure of Democratic party leadership.

He didnt have a core progressive message and that ultimately is why he lost. The Democratic party could spend $100m and he would still lose. Because he didnt stand for anything.

but there is hope for a Brand New Congress

Thats the name of a group that selects, trains, supports and promotes progressives who want to run for Congress.

Brand New Congress (BNC), formed in April 2016, currently has 14 candidates who have announced their 2018 mid-term campaigns, including several who are running against incumbent Democrats.

We essentially provide full service campaign service, BNCs Corbin Trent told the Guardian this week. Brand New Congress manages press request, helps with events and ballot access, does opposition research on incumbents, and can even help with speechwriting.

Brand New Congress has organized a weekend canvassing kick off for its candidates (who are from across America) on Sunday. Each of the candidates all of whom are running on progressive platforms are holding events to boost their campaigns.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is running against incumbent Democrat Joseph Crowley in New Yorks 14th congressional district, organized for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016.

We have the capacity and opportunity to be ambitious in legislation, Ocasio-Cortez told the Guardian. Because the world is changing in ways weve never seen before.

What were reading

Were in the midst of an all-hands-on-deck emergency, writes Rebecca Solnit, in which new groups and coalitions are emerging along with unforeseen capacities in many people who didnt previously think they were activists. Solnit says there are extraordinary things happening in this moment, in an uplifting survey of the activist land.

Progressives should try to speak conservative to score victories, historian and LGBTQ strategist Nathaniel Frank writes in the LA Times. He says the successes of the LGBTQ movement came when activists learned to speak the language of those they most needed to enlist rather than those who already agreed with them.

]]>Donald Trump says he doesn’t want a ‘poor person’ in cabinet roleshttp://progressnothingless.com/donald-trump-says-he-doesnt-want-a-poor-person-in-cabinet-roles/
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 06:54:29 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3007President tells crowd during Iowa tour that economic adviser and commerce secretary had to give up a lot to work for him Donald Trump has said he doesnt want a poor person to hold economic roles in his administration as he used an Iowa rally to defend his decision to Republican congressional victory in Georgia …

]]>President tells crowd during Iowa tour that economic adviser and commerce secretary had to give up a lot to work for him

Donald Trump has said he doesnt want a poor person to hold economic roles in his administration as he used an Iowa rally to defend his decision to appoint the wealthy to his cabinet.

The US president told a crowd on Wednesday night: Somebody said why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy? No its true. And Wilburs [commerce secretary Wilbur Ross] a very rich person in charge of commerce. I said: Because thats the kind of thinking we want.

The president explained that Ross and his economic adviser Gary Cohn had to give up a lot to take these jobs and that Cohn in particular, a former president of Goldman Sachs, went from massive pay days to peanuts.

Trump added: And I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just dont want a poor person. Does that make sense?

Iowa, with its large share of independent voters, could be a proving ground for whether Trump can count on the support of voters beyond his base. Unaffiliated voters, or no party voters as they are known in Iowa, make up 36% of the electorate, compared with 33% who registered as Republican and 31% registered as Democrat.

Self-identified independents in Iowa voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 13 percentage points last year, according to exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and television networks. That margin helped Trump take the state by nearly nine points after Barack Obama won it the previous two elections.

Trump held a Des Moines rally in December as part of his transition-era thank you tour of states he had won, but has not been back to Iowa since.

At the rally, he touted his administrations efforts to roll back regulations, mused about putting solar panels on a Mexican border wall, derided wind power for killing birds in a state that uses a lot of it and revealed that he urged the Senate to create a health care plan with heart. Add some money to it!

He avoided any discussion of the scandals surrounding his presidency, other than one brief reference to the witch hunt, his term for the inquiries into his campaigns ties to Russia.

]]>US sending almost 4,000 extra forces to Afghanistan, Trump official sayshttp://progressnothingless.com/us-sending-almost-4000-extra-forces-to-afghanistan-trump-official-says/
Fri, 16 Jun 2017 09:03:36 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=2834In an attempt to break a stalemate in a war that has passed to a third president, the move will be the largest deployment of US manpower under Trump The Pentagon will send almost 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan, according to a Trump administration official, an attempt to break a stalemate in a war …

]]>In an attempt to break a stalemate in a war that has passed to a third president, the move will be the largest deployment of US manpower under Trump

The Pentagon will send almost 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan, according to a Trump administration official, an attempt to break a stalemate in a war that has now passed to a third US commander-in-chief.

The decision by defense secretary Jim Mattis could be announced as early as next week, the official said, and will be the largest deployment of American manpower under Donald Trumps young presidency.

It follows Trumps move to give Mattis the authority to set troop levels and seeks to address assertions by the top US commander in Afghanistan that he does not have enough forces to help Afghanistans army against a resurgent Taliban insurgency. The rising threat posed by Islamic State extremists, evidenced in a rash of deadly attacks in the capital city of Kabul, has only fueled calls for a stronger US presence, as have several recent American combat deaths.

The bulk of the additional troops will train and advise Afghan forces, according to the administration official, who was not authorized to discuss details of the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A smaller number would be assigned to counterterror operations against the Taliban and Isis, the official said.

Although Trump has delegated authority for US troop numbers in Afghanistan, the responsibility for Americas wars and the men and women who fight in them rests on his shoulders. Trump has inherited Americas longest conflict with no clear endpoint or a defined strategy for American success, though US troop levels are far lower than they were under presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush. In 2009, Obama authorized a surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, bringing the total there to more than 100,000, before drawing down over the rest of his presidency.

Trump has barely spoken about Afghanistan as a candidate or president, concentrating instead on crushing Isis in Syria and Iraq. His predecessors both had hoped to win the war. Bush scored a quick success, helping allied militant groups oust the Taliban shortly after the 9/11 attacks, before seeing the gains slip away as American focus shifted to the Iraq war. In refocusing attention on Afghanistan, Obama eliminated much of the countrys al-Qaida network and authorized the mission that killed Osama bin Laden but failed to snuff out the Talibans rebellion.

Mattis deployment of more troops will be far smaller than Obamas.

While military leaders have consistently said more forces are needed, a decision had been tied up in a lengthy, wider debate about Americas long-term military, diplomatic and economic strategy for ending the war. Gen John Nicholson, the top US commander there, has said the troops are necessary to properly train and advise the Afghan military and perform work handled at greater cost by contractors. Afghan leaders endorse the idea of more US troops, having lost significant ground to the Taliban in recent months.

Obama set a cap a year ago of 8,400 troops in Afghanistan after slowing the pace of what he hoped would be a US withdrawal.

Nevertheless, there are at least another 2,000 US troops in Afghanistan not included in the official count. These include forces that are technically considered temporary even if they have been in the war zone for months.

Trumps decision on Tuesday to give Mattis authority to set force levels in Afghanistan mirrored similar powers he handed over earlier this year for US fights in Iraq and Syria. The change was made public hours after Senator John McCain, the Senate armed services committees Republican chairman, blasted Mattis for the administrations failure to present an overarching strategy for Afghanistan. McCain, speaking during the defense secretarys testimony before an armed services committee hearing, said the US was not winning in Afghanistan, and Mattis agreed.

The finality of the decision isnt entirely clear. While Trump has handed over the troop level decision-making, there is nothing preventing him from taking it back.

Mattis has repeatedly stressed that increasing the number of US troops in Afghanistan would take place within a broader, long-term strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.

While the new troops could raise fears of mission creep, Mattis told lawmakers this week that he did not envision returning to the force levels of 2010 to 2011, when Obama thought he could pressure the Taliban into peace talks.

Reconciliation remains the goal, Mattis told a House appropriations panel on Thursday, along with reducing Afghan government corruption.

Were not looking at a purely military strategy, he said. All wars come to an end. Our job is to end it as quickly as possible without losing the very mission that weve recognized, through several administrations, that was worth putting those young Americans on the line for.

There have been almost 2,400 US military deaths in Afghanistan since 2001. Three US soldiers were killed and another was wounded in eastern Afghanistan this weekend in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

]]>Technologists in the era of Trumphttp://progressnothingless.com/technologists-in-the-era-of-trump/
Sat, 10 Jun 2017 00:27:53 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=2645Roger Huang handles growth for Springboard and writes technical programming tutorials at code(love). If innovation is the religion of the technology industry, then industriousness is the religion for the rest of Americas workforce. Most of America is as foreign to the technology industry as China might be to Americans. Pound-for-pound, immigrants are a larger part …

If innovation is the religion of the technology industry, then industriousness is the religion for the rest of Americas workforce.

Most of America is as foreign to the technology industry as China might be to Americans. Pound-for-pound, immigrants are a larger part of companies founded in technology. The average yearly salary of a data scientist is above $110,000, almost double the median income across the United States.

Its important to note these differences because they help blueprint the cultural walls that have built up year-by-year. And tearing down the barriers to more equitable economic prosperity will involve reconciling the people building technology with the cultural effects of that technology on the citizens that they do not understand.

While Trump may have picked up a category of union workers and working class voters that usually go more strongly for Democrats, he did not, by himself, flip a dynamic that had lower income groups voting for the Democrat and higher income groups voting for the Republican. Many minority voters suffered the most during the 2008 recession the racial wealth gap in America has only increased. Yet that did not significantly affect their voting patterns.

What did affect voting patterns was the desire for a change in the direction of the country, but its not the change through innovation that remains the promise of Silicon Valley technologists.

Robots on a shelf at MassRobotics innovation hub in Boston

The seeds of automation

Why does change and culture matter so much? The Midwest and the South that delivered the election offer a hint as to why. J.D. Vance, in his moving book (Hillbilly Elegy, part-memoir, part-elegy), offered that the church was the only social support left for towns wrecked by a lack of work.

It argued that losing work not only created economic chaos, it created cultural tension with groups of people cut off from all support. It argued that economic displacement was never wholly economic and that it came with cultural effects.

People in the technology industry talk often of a universal basic income and imagine itll solve every problem inherent to the loss of work. What we dont realize is just how meaningful work truly is to the American identity.

Loss of work doesnt just put economic stability at risk.It causes health issues. It leads to breakdowns in cultural identity, and loss of status, and perhaps most importantly a loss of respect. It can kill people by driving suicides and crime up. These are things that thoughts of a universal basic income will never be able to solve fully.

Voters who embraced Trump werent just thinking of absolute economic growth: They were thinking of relative economic growth and what it meant for their relative status. A universal basic income doesnt help people cope with the loss of purpose or status. This is something working and middle-class America, for better or for worse, has been conditioned to see as their lifes purpose.

Coupled with this is an epidemic of drugs that has gripped parts of America especially inthe smaller cities and rural counties that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

It changes the argument if you think of a job as more than a salary, which is how most Americans rightfully regard their jobs.

Technologists can be guilty of treating work with contempt. Many of us may assume that because Americans are dissatisfied with their current working conditions means they dont value the jobs they have.

While that may be true of individual jobs, its grievously false when it comes to employment itself. A realization that work is the religion of America, and that industriousness is the floor upon which your status rests, is one of the most concrete ways to view the shattering of a bubble that had warped the technology sectors vision.

Networks built to augment human drivers are now looking to replace them. Human labor, the largest input cost for many companies, is at the losing end of a ferocious war to determine who controls the wealth and power in a society. Increasingly, that looks to be technologists devouring the world.

Those who have the technical skills needed to build, understand and control the systems of the future have nothing to fear. Those who are being subjected to the effects of those efforts are confused and angry, and they dont know why opportunities seem to be decreasing. Some may blame immigrants. Some may blame a rigged system. What cant be denied is that this feeling is real, and backed by the data both systematic and anecdotal. Saying everything is alright doesnt mean its quite so.

Economic prosperity is coming, but it has been divided increasingly into polarized classes of haves and have-nots and no amount of universal basic income or new types of work can tackle that issue head-on with the urgency it needs.

Those who voted for Trump were not voting necessarily for their economic present. They were voting for the future a future filled with economic and cultural desolation that would continue to pass them by if they did not take a wrecking ball to the systems around them. We have, all of us, started reaping the seeds of automation.

Broken accessibility

All of this wouldnt hurt as much, perhaps, if the technology sector were as inclusive as its ideals. Tech is a meritocracy in name. Yet beyond all of the technical skills one should look for, the deadly truth remains that we are very much a place where success is found in access and networks.

For a group of people so data-driven, the obsession over unscientific variations of culture fit can become a quick way to exclude different types of people for scant reasons. The need to look beyond traditional sources of engineers highlights a simple fact that the technology sector is in many ways less diverse and inclusive than the rest of America.

J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy admonishes the white working class that encourages reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible yet he also has words for the upper-class elites and the aspirational (and diminishing) upper middle class. While he may have been applying his critique to the traditional guardians of mobility, the elite Ivy League schools he attended his train of thought applies as much to the new gatekeeper of wealth mobility, the startups and investment firms that dot the world with exclusive cocktail parties and private pitches.

There is a new, almost Gatsby-esque contempt for those who dont pattern-match with the traits associated with a successful entrepreneur. The nerds might have won but weve left precious little space for others.

As much as we might not understand the rest of America, they may not understand us, as well. And when not understanding the rituals of a new ascendant economic and cultural class costs people a fair share of the pie, they will fear what they dont understand, and hate what they fear if they havent started already.

Data-driven disruption

Pattern-matching is the natural default of technologists. It extends to a love for data, for rational, hard facts that determine ideal courses of action. Beyond just a fascination for the underdog and new technologies, a love of being data-driven is part and parcel of the gospel of the technology sector.

Its something thats not naturally obvious when you look at the tech sector, a collection of people bound by ideas that go beyond them. Yet this love of data can take an unhealthy turn.

Above all else, the Trump campaign used social media to maximum effect. A campaign that was heavily outspent on all dimensions by Hillary Clinton had to rely on free and earned media to get its message out. In many ways, the Trump campaign built itself on the efficient use of tools technology has made available to all.

Yet another layer of this story goes much beyond that. Fake news swayed many people during the campaign, and often spread like wildfire. Much has been written on this topic, so many of the key points dont bear rehashing however, the main point to be made here may be that when you have an algorithm that prizes engagement in the goals of monetization, your data can lead you to bad outcomes.

With the wrong approach, youll often get results that supersede your original intent. In this case, Facebooks standards prized the wisdom of the crowd, and, at that, a segmented one. In effect, Facebook has determined that we are the wisest to determine the content around us. That has led to several implications beyond healthy revenue for Facebook.

It has led to different disjointed bubbles of communication where you can live in the same city and get vastly different opinions at all times. It doesnt consider authentic content to be the most valuable: rather it optimizes for reaction. At times, that has led to the rise of clickbait empires such as Upworthy. Now, it has led to the rise of alternative media sources that trade in truths and conspiracies.

The answer isnt to have better human intervention or more editorial standards. Its to realize just how much data collection matters, and how the algorithmic treatment you apply to immensely valuable data can lead to vast societal impact. Forty percent or so of people get their news from Facebook it is by far one of the largest gatekeepers of information and trust in the world.

The trust users have placed into it, revealing every intimate detail of their lives, will now be entrusted into the hands of a company that is bound by law to obey and submit to federal surveillance agencies controlled by a Trump administration.

A personal story

As I take the time to wind down my thoughts, I have to note that writing this story has been very personal to me. I work in tech. When Donald Trump says immigrants take away American jobs, and when he tries to restrict legal paths to immigration, that directly affects people like me.

I think back to my work with Springboard. Weve helped train people around the world, but mostly Americans, in cutting-edge digital skills, from UX design to data science. Weve helped many people gain jobs in the new digital economy, jobs that promise satisfaction and high pay.

Despite that, I wonder if Im the burden Trump implies I am. I pay taxes and dont receive any benefits, yet I watch a president teeter between saying he wants high-skilled migrants, and cutting off every possible route to become one. J1s, H-1B, TNs, green cards alphabet soup for most Americans, but essential sounds to anybody seeking to navigate the byzantine legal immigration system.

In many ways, magnified much beyond my personal story and in situations that are much graver than mine, Trump is Americas personal repudiation to many elements of technology.

It is a personal rejection, one encompassed in a wave of rejections. It is clear to me now more than ever that the technology sector is its own special place yet if we dont reach out, our isolation will crush everything we seek to build.

The way forward

Ironically, its on Twitter where Ive found closure after this election season. Every time Ive reached out to Trump fans there it has sometimes resulted in them questioning my ethnicity and belonging (I keep a Twitter strongly correlated with my identity). Thats a vast minority of opinions though.

Ive had good conversations. Ive learned certain things. I feel like Ive imparted to at least a few people the prosperity immigrants can bring. Most importantly, I feel like Ive fulfilled part of the sacred promise of technology: that more information would bring a better understanding of the world and that the potential for humans to connect across vast geographies could lead to insight that might never have been created.

I still believe in that sacred promise. And even though charges can be levied on how America perceives technology, we have to look inwards and fix whats broken and confining us from understanding the rest of America first. We can examine the effect of automation, and be very earnest about the displacement it creates. We can make high-paying technology jobs and opportunities more accessible to all. We can use data for good.

Fundamentally, the technology sector is an island of optimism that is looking to do good while doing well this above all else is what will pave the way forward.

]]>Jared Kushner discussed creating secret communications channel with Moscow reportshttp://progressnothingless.com/jared-kushner-discussed-creating-secret-communications-channel-with-moscow-reports/
Sat, 27 May 2017 06:45:43 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=2242Russias ambassador told his superiors that he and Kushner discussed ways to shield White House transition team discussions from monitoring, sources said Washington Post said, citing US officials briefed on intelligence reports. Trumps son-in-law made the proposal at a meeting in early December at Trump Tower in New York, weeks before Trump was sworn in, …

]]>Russias ambassador told his superiors that he and Kushner discussed ways to shield White House transition team discussions from monitoring, sources said

Jared Kushner and Russias ambassador to Washington allegedly discussed setting up a secret communications channel to cloak contacts between Moscow and Donald Trumps White House transition team, it was reported on Friday.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that he and Kushner discussed ways to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, the Washington Post said, citing US officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Trumps son-in-law made the proposal at a meeting in early December at Trump Tower in New York, weeks before Trump was sworn in, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by the US officials, the paper said.

Michael Flynn, Trumps first national security adviser, also allegedly attended the meeting.

The report will likely put Kushner, who is now a senior White House adviser, under heightened scrutiny in the investigations into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. Earlier this week it was reported that the FBI was investigating his contacts with Russian officials.

It would be the first time the Senates bipartisan investigation has made such a request to Trumps official campaign organization.

The White House made no immediate response to requests for comment on either report. Trump is concluding his first foreign trip as president this week. He has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia.

Two other outlets published related scoops on Friday. The first from the New York Times said that Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch once close to Paul Manafort, Trumps former campaign manager, offered to cooperate with congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in return for immunity. Lawmakers rejected his conditions, the Times reported.

And Reuters, citing seven current and former US officials, reported that Kushner had at least three contacts with Kislyak during and after the presidential campaign that were previously undisclosed. Those contacts allegedly included two phone calls between April and November 2016.

In response to the Reuters report, Kushners attorney, Jamie Gorelick, said Kushner did not remember any calls with Kislyak between April and November. Mr Kushner participated in thousands of calls in this time period. He has no recollection of the calls as described. We have asked [Reuters] for the dates of such alleged calls so we may look into it and respond, but we have not received such information.

The cascade of news showed that the multiple Russia inquiries are advancing and that leaks continue to spout from the government, giving administration officials no respite even as they trot the globe.

The White House disclosed Kushners meeting with Kislyak in March, four months after it happened, and played down its importance. But the Washington Post reported that the FBI now considers the encounter, plus another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest.

Kushner, who is married to the presidents daughter, Ivanka, has said he will cooperate with any investigation.

Current and former US intelligence officials were astonished that he would have requested a secret back channel, calling it naive or crazy given the FBIs close tabs on Russian officials in the US, the Post reported.

Evan McMullin, an independent candidate in the 2016 presidential race, said the report raised the stakes for Kushner. If true, this is treasonous activity, whether borne of malice or navet, or both, he tweeted.

Maxine Waters, the Democratic congressional firebrand, expressed little surprise at the latest allegation. Jared Kushner is under scrutiny in the FBIs Trump-Russia investigation. In other news, water is wet.

Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters)

Jared Kushner is under scrutiny in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. In other news, water is wet.